What Your Customer Can Afford is NOT Your Business

I hear the following comments a lot in business “My target market doesn’t have a lot of money” and “My target market just don’t want to spend money on my product or service”.

In today’s Profit Love Byte I am going to tell you why I am calling bullshit on those comments and any other comment related to what your target market can or can’t afford.

I am going to illustrate my point today with a couple of examples.

Well YOU must be rich!

I was standing in a checkout line at the supermarket with a punnet of raspberries. In Australia we are rarely blessed with cheap raspberries, they are kind of luxury for many of us. At $6 a punnet they are not cheap, but I like them so I was standing in line ready to buy when the women in front of me said “Well you must be rich to be able to afford those”. I laughed it off then watched her push her trolley stacked high with boxes of soft drinks, ice creams and a lot of expensive packaged kids snacks, like those boxes with three crackers and some cheese.

Now what she does is her own business, I could not care less but that is a perfect example of how different people value different things. To me her pre-packaged crackers and cheese are a huge expense and to her my raspberries are expensive.

Shhh…….. Sometimes I don’t flush to save money…..

Let’s move onto example number 2, I love having baths but I limit myself to no more than 2 per week. If I have an extra bath I won’t flush the toilet every time I pee to save the money I spent on the extra bath water. In a complete contradiction to what you might assume about my spending habits I drive a BMW and not a small one, a 4 WD. I also don’t prepare my meals, I pay someone else to.

So why am I so obsessed with the bath water. Well probably because when I was growing up I was constantly reminded that electricity wasn’t free and having a bath wasn’t something we were allowed to do everyday. Or maybe I just don’t like to spend money on water and power?

The point is we all have our own set of value references, we all place value on different things. It doesn’t matter what background you come from, where you were bought up, how much money you now earn, what you value and where you are willing to spend money is very specific to you.

Your customers, your target market, are the same and it is not your right or your business to make judgments on what they can and cannot afford.

Pay attention to the people around you, look at your own habits and you will start to see and to appreciate what I talking about.